#which ALSO has no reason not to have a tile option

[crochettier]

tech developers who change user interfaces just for the sake of changing them please pay me $10000 per change you'd like to make

[ms-demeanor]

Hello! First, I wanted to say thank you for your post about updating software and such. I really appreciated your perspective as someone with ADHD. The way you described your experiences with software frustration was IDENTICAL to my experience, so your post made a lot of sense to me.

Second, (and I hope my question isn't bothering you lol) would you mind explaining why it's important to update/adopt the new software? Like, why isn't there an option that doesn't involve constantly adopting new things? I understand why they'd need to fix stuff like functional bugs/make it compatible with new tech, but is it really necessary to change the user side of things as well?

Sorry if those are stupid questions or they're A Lot for a tumblr rando to ask, I'd just really like to understand because I think it would make it easier to get myself to adopt new stuff if I understand why it's necessary, and the other folks I know that know about computers don't really seem to understand the experience.

Thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom!!

A huge part of it is changing technologies and changing norms; I brought up Windows 8 in that other post and Win8 is a *great* example of user experience changing to match hardware, just in a situation that was an enormous mismatch with the market.

Win8's much-beloathed tiles came about because Microsoft seemed to be anticipating a massive pivot to tablet PCs in nearly all applications. The welcome screen was designed to be friendly to people who were using handheld touchscreens who could tap through various options, and it was meant to require more scrolling and less use of a keyboard.

But most people who the operating system went out to *didn't* have touchscreen tablets or laptops, they had a desktop computer with a mouse and a keyboard.

When that was released, it was Microsoft attempting to keep up with (or anticipate) market trends - they wanted something that was like "the iPad for Microsoft" so Windows 8 was meant to go with Microsoft Surface tablets.

We spent the first month of Win8's launch making it look like Windows 7 for our customers.

You can see the same thing with the centered taskbar on Windows 11; that's very clearly supposed to mimic the dock on apple computers (only you can't pin it anywhere but the bottom of the screen, which sucks).

Some of the visual changes are just trends and various companies trying to keep up with one another.

With software like Adobe I think it's probably based on customer data. The tool layout and the menu dropdowns are likely based on what people are actually looking for, and change based on what other tools people are using. That's likely true for most programs you use - the menu bar at the top of the screen in Word is populated with the options that people use the most; if a function you used to click on all the time is now buried, there's a possibility that people use it less these days for any number of reasons. (I'm currently being driven mildly insane by Teams moving the "attach file" button under a "more" menu instead of as an icon next to the "send message" button, and what this tells me is either that more users are putting emojis in their messages than attachments, or microsoft WANTS people to put more emojis than messages in their attachments).

But focusing on the operating system, since that's the big one:

The thing about OSs is that you interact with them so frequently that any little change seems massive and you get REALLY frustrated when you have to deal with that, but version-to-version most OSs don't change all that much visually and they also don't get released all that frequently. I've been working with windows machines for twelve years and in that time the only OSs that Microsoft has released were 8, 10, and 11. That's only about one OS every four years, which just is not that many. There was a big visual change in the interface between 7 and 8 (and 8 and 8.1, which is more of a 'panicked backing away' than a full release), but otherwise, realistically, Windows 11 still looks a lot like XP.

The second one is a screenshot of my actual computer. The only change I've made to the display is to pin the taskbar to the left side instead of keeping it centered and to fuck around a bit with the colors in the display customization. I haven't added any plugins or tools to get it to look different.

This is actually a pretty good demonstration of things changing based on user behavior too - XP didn't come with a search field in the task bar or the start menu, but later versions of Windows OSs did, because users had gotten used to searching things more in their phones and browsers, so then they learned to search things on their computers.

There are definitely nefarious reasons that software manufacturers change their interfaces. Microsoft has included ads in home versions of their OS and pushed searches through the Microsoft store since Windows 10, as one example. That's shitty and I think it's worthwhile to find the time to shut that down (and to kill various assistants and background tools and stop a lot of stuff that runs at startup).

But if you didn't have any changes, you wouldn't have any changes. I think it's handy to have a search field in the taskbar. I find "settings" (which is newer than control panel) easier to navigate than "control panel." Some of the stuff that got added over time is *good* from a user perspective - you can see that there's a little stopwatch pinned at the bottom of my screen; that's a tool I use daily that wasn't included in previous versions of the OS. I'm glad it got added, even if I'm kind of bummed that my Windows OS doesn't come with Spider Solitaire anymore.

One thing that's helpful to think about when considering software is that nobody *wants* to make clunky, unusable software. People want their software to run well, with few problems, and they want users to like it so that they don't call corporate and kick up a fuss.

When you see these kinds of changes to the user experience, it often reflects something that *you* may not want, but that is desirable to a *LOT* of other people. The primary example I can think of here is trackpad scrolling direction; at some point it became common for trackpads to scroll in the opposite direction that they used to; now the default direction is the one that feels wrong to me, because I grew up scrolling with a mouse, not a screen. People who grew up scrolling on a screen seem to feel that the new direction is a lot more intuitive, so it's the default. Thankfully, that's a setting that's easy to change, so it's a change that I make every time I come across it, but the change was made for a sensible reason, even if that reason was opaque to me at the time I stumbled across it and continues to irritate me to this day.

I don't know. I don't want to defend Windows all that much here because I fucking hate Microsoft and definitely prefer using Linux when I'm not at work or using programs that I don't have on Linux. But the thing is that you'll see changes with Linux releases as well.

I wouldn't mind finding a tool that made my desktop look 100% like Windows 95, that would be fun. But we'd probably all be really frustrated if there hadn't been any interface improvements changes since MS-DOS (and people have DEFINITELY been complaining about UX changes at least since then).

Like, I talk about this in terms of backward compatibility sometimes. A lot of people are frustrated that their old computers can't run new software well, and that new computers use so many resources. But the flipside of that is that pretty much nobody wants mobile internet to work the way that it did in 2004 or computers to act the way they did in 1984.

Like. People don't think about it much these days but the "windows" of the Windows Operating system represented a massive change to how people interacted with their computers that plenty of people hated and found unintuitive.

(also take some time to think about the little changes that have happened that you've appreciated or maybe didn't even notice. I used to hate the squiggly line under misspelled words but now I see the utility. Predictive text seems like new technology to me but it's really handy for a lot of people. Right clicking is a UX innovation. Sometimes you have to take the centered task bar in exchange for the built-in timer deck; sometimes you have to lose color-coded files in exchange for a right click.)

[murfeelee]

inZOI - Madzie & Max Lightwood-Bane (Shadowhunters)

After making Magnus Bane, I decided to make his kids to try out the kids for the demo.

IIRC, the TS4 CAS demo didn't let us make kids (did they even effing HAVE kids as a lifestate back then, or was it just zero toddlers & bassinet babies?). So we're already off to a better start than effing EA.

I'm sad that Krafton didn't let us have access to any sliders to really customize kids in the demo. The presets are ok enough, though some of them look like mini adults or something--the eye bags are too much (at least 3 poor kids looked like they'd been huffing a pack of cigarettes a day since the effing womb).

Kids have no nails & accessories, which is bogus. They get all the adult hats--fedora included--which is...interesting. We need some clips & barrettes & scrunchies etc--real 90s Throwback At Claire's.

Even TS3 gave kids earrings & bracelets & watches etc, so Krafton needs to step their game up, this is unacceptable that kids barely have EFF ALL.

The kids' clothes are also woefully low--no SKIRTS or DRESSES?! Just one set of PJs for outfits, why? They're all basically the same choices for adults & kids, which is kinda cool but kinda lazy? Give kids their own unique sense of style & identity--Asia has the cutest stuff, come on, don't be generic like this. U_U More kawaii, less Baby Gap. 4/10.

But it made me realize that I like the shoes options on the kids waaaaay more than I do on the adults. The adults need better shoes; that was my least favorite part; TS4's demo had much better shoes.

General

Two things I realized I'd overlooked on the adult zois:

EYES & TEETH: we need to be able to recolor the eye sclera, and the teeth. Both are just way too yellow for my liking, which I noticed as soon as I made Blueberry, and the blue made his eyes & teeth look like he had jaundice.

CUSTOM PATTERNS/TEXTURES: This is so frikkin cool! It's basically a lightweight version of TSRW's Pattern Tool (without the recolorability, sadly); allowing you to directly import DIY textures onto clothes. You can change the tiling & X/Y axis position, it's great!

I added the constellations & skeleton on Blueberry's tops. We need more GOTH fashion representation, Krafton! \m / (^0^) \m/

One of my favorite features is the hair that you can cut. Max's hair is gorgeous--you can make it really long, or really short. I went with medium-ish. And I LOVE the highlights options, iirc it had like 4 or 5 parts. Again: ALL hairs need AT LEAST the highlight function, if the length feature can't be universally implemented for whatever reason.

(I'm posting links to this & my first "review" on inZOI's Discord, so hopefully someone over there gets this feedback. I bloody doubt it, but yolo.)

[marypaol]

So Close Yet So Far Away

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Panic attacks, anxiety, self doubt, relationship doubt, negative thoughts, angst :(

Summary: Reader has a panic attack and Draco helps her.

Note: I’m so sorry I haven’t posted a story in a while, it was for some reason taking me forever to finish it even though I had it all planned out. Thanks for the patience. :) And no mention of Y/N if that’s okay! Have a wonderful day and enjoy! 😉

-Also I had to put this gif, he looks so sad! :(

___

She thought they were good. She thought he was good. She thought she was good…Wasn’t she?

That was the same set of questions or thoughts that ran through her mind each morning when his fingers no longer brushed her waist and at night when his cold back faced her.

Was it something she was doing? Something she said and it happened to give him the feeling of unsatisfactory?

She wished she could flick her wand and all could be fixed, but even magic like that couldn’t fix her mental problems. Some things couldn’t be fixed with magic, they had to be fixed with communication and understandings, heart to heart as they discussed their issues, hoping that later on they could at least hold onto their love for a little longer before it was gone.

It seemed these days she was the only one that held that hope, that on her part she was the one who wanted to discuss, not him. The real question was why and when. She just didn’t have the courage to bring it up, afraid to see the penitential snarl on his face or the disappointment towards her to rise in his chest.

She didn’t want that. She was sure no one wanted that. Heck, she bets he didn’t want that but it was something he couldn’t control. Something he had no other choice but to show.

Well, back to the present tense, she is back to the what seemed the cold sheets of lost hope and previous love and her eyes set on the ceiling; not planning on leaving the tiles any time soon.

She heard him breathing softly beside her, and when she was brave enough to glance she saw the slow rise of his shoulders as he slept; his back was still to her. She didn’t know if when she fell asleep somehow he knew and he secretly rolled over and embraced her, or he stayed in the same position the whole night, his body somehow afraid of grazing her skin in any way during his slumber.

It was most likely the second option, for she was sure that she would wake up from something so special beholding her (that something special being him.)

Simply his body facing her would wake her up. His touch upon her skin, for it always made her shiver in the best way. But of course she was imagining all that while she lay in bed with him next to her but far away, almost like he wanted nothing to do with her.

She couldn’t help it. The tears that arose in her eyes were against her will, but she knew the cause was her hurting heart inside her chest, beating the best it could through the pain. She couldn’t be more grateful for it, supplying blood for her body all whilst it stung with great pain.

Soon the tears that were just settled in her eyes were now taking home on her cheeks, flowing like mini rivers and her face was the deep green hills, the water swaying to and fro as the winds picked up.

Her brain started winding, sending thoughts that were so darkened and negative she could no longer breathe properly. Would he leave her? Sure the girl wasn’t as pretty as some other girls within the Magic world, specifically Hogwarts at the moment, but she was average; wasn’t that what she’s always been? Average?

Average isn’t good enough. Not for him. He deserved endless happiness compared to what he’s been through.

Was what she was giving him already, which was happiness and love, not enough for him? She thought so, but based on his current actions of ignoring her and acting like he’s reluctant to sleep beside her, was her displays of affection not satisfactory?

Were they satisfactory, yet not enough to fulfill his expectations?

Her brain was going so fast that it was then this she realized her heart was pounding, so much so the heard it in her ears.

She grew worried, since she wasn’t running or anything, for there was no reason her heart could be beating so quickly. Her lips parted, lungs suddenly starting to run out of air. Her breathing quickened, panicking even more when her heart didn’t stop and the ability to breathe was getting harder.

A wave of hot sweat ran over her like a chill, her legs breaking from the covers abruptly, chest clenching.

Her wobbly legs took her to the bathroom, hands almost slamming the door and fiddling with the lock until it clicked, hands still pressing pressure on it even though the knob already turned.

Her body ran out of strength and she let go quickly, leaning on the sink as she bent her head, squeezing her eyes shut so tightly she saw colors within her eyelids.

Her heavy breathing slowly changed to wheezing and tears, hiccups hurting her chest as her body fought for air for an unknown reason.

Her body flinched hardly when there was rough knocking on the door, the person wanting to come in.

“Loves, you okay?”

The voice. His voice.

It rumbled through the door, not just because he was in fact talking through a door, but also for the reason of his sleepy voice, still tired from his previous slumber.

She was silent besides her heavy breathing still being audible, but even that she was trying to keep quiet.

But of course she couldn’t do so, and since he got quiet as a response he knocked again and twisted the handle gently.

He knocked once again when he found out it was locked. “Loves, open.”

He said it so gently and soft, voice full of concern and love for her. She felt belonged, right then, felt loved and cared for. She walked over to the door hesitantly, hand reaching out and while doing so she saw it was shaking.

She fiddled with the handle with fear rising in her chest in anticipation.

Was he gonna leave her?

The door opened, messy blonde locks coming into view. Despite the softness of his voice earlier, her panic inside her chest caused her to doubt how he would react. She expected his eyes to be hard and full of irritation for I interrupting his sleep, but they were full of concern and worry within the orbs, silver surrounding her vision instead of tears.

He didn’t wait to have a staring contest with her before he closed the door, walking towards her and wrapping his splendor arms around her, stroking the ends of her hair and encouraging to to breath slower.

“I-I can’t.” She said. She spoke through breath after breath, no space between them.

She felt his head nod against her neck. “You can, loves.”

Tears kept streaming. Breathes kept coming out short. Hands kept stroking her cheeks to get rid of the coming tears once he lifted his head up from her neck area.

He sucked in a breath at seeing her in pain, fingers going to her hair and moving it away from her sweaty face.

He cupped her face in his hands, cradling it like the most delicate flower to ever exist. Because to him she was. And it was his job to water her and provide her light.

“Honey, just breathe! I’m here, aren’t I?”

She nodded in his hands, showing him how strong she was. And she’s been told she was by him; he tries to tell her every day.

He suddenly started breathing loud but steady, waving his hand gently to show her to copy him.

She did just that, and all doubts floated away, every questioning thought about their future fading away, replaced with nothing but sincere and genuine love.

Here then she embraced him once more, desperate to feel his warmth. Nose buried in his clothed chest, she mumbled, “Don’t ever leave me, please.”

He scoffed against her. “Leave you? Darling, my heart would rather die a thousand different ways than to leave you.”

-Sorry for any errors, I didn’t look it over! Thanks for reading and make sure to check out other stories:

👇

Masterlist

[thelampisaflashlight]

Headcanons about the ghouls, because I feel like crud and stayed home from work. Let's go.

-Aeon can't cook, he burns pretty much everything he tries to make except for eggs. He can make eggs, but that's only because Dew stood by and watched him do it.

He gets too fidgety/wants to move around instead of paying attention to what's going on in the pan, and that usually results in burnt or underdone food.

In contrast to Aeon, Dew can cook... he just doesn't like to.

It takes too much time in his opinion, but he will happily wait for someone else to make him something to eat.

-Rain eats bugs, and he's not even remotely ashamed of that fact, though perhaps he should stop trying to get others to join him for "a dip and dine" at the lake if he's unwilling to provide other options...

-Cumulus is a dinosaur enthusiast, which I've said before, but on top of that, she loves to explore and learn about things in general.

She's the fun fact queen and absolutely kills at trivia night.

-Mountain is very particular about how he keeps his garden, to the extent that no one helps him with it anymore, because he gets huffy/annoyed when someone does something "the wrong way".

The only gardener he hasn't scared away has, in the past, chased him around the grounds with a metal rake, thrown a boot at him, and kicked him in the face.

It's probably the healthiest dynamic the abbey has seen between him and one of the staff members.

-For reasons unknown, Dew has a strained relationship with Delta, to the extent that he will run if confronted by him.

Everyone is pretty sure the majority of the awkwardness is on Dew's part, though no one has been able to get a straight answer from him about it.

-Copia knew basically nothing about ghouls when he started, but now he has a whole notebook full of fairly accurate information about their physical traits, social dynamics, and various bits of trivia regarding them as a species/individually.

He knows more about them than even some of the other members of the church.

-The ghouls have a whiteboard in their den that is used for a variety of things, but usually for impromptu meetings and visualizing concepts that are hard to articulate.

Copia also has a whiteboard upstairs in his office that he uses for similar purposes, usually to the chagrin of the poor sibling of sin he dragged in there to act as his "rubber duck" for songs or design work.

-Sunny has abandonment issues, and often struggles with articulating her needs, preferring to do things herself for fear that others won't do them for her, even when they offer to do so or have done so in the past.

She feels like she is easy to forget, and tends to be very down on herself internally despite appearing outwardly bright and happy.

Although she knows it's not healthy/is the result of her own internalized issues, she has a hard time being friendly with Aeon and Aurora, but because Aurora is the one who "replaced" her -despite Sunny asking to take time away from the band- she has a bit more misplaced anger towards her.

Because of this, Sunny has been attending counseling to unpack why she feels the way she does.

And lastly;

-While the ghouls act/appear human for the most part, when they gets startled, they instantly devolve into creature mode. Lots of skittering and scampering away and sliding on tile because their claws can't get traction.

[smok3r7]

Is Leaving Even An Option?

Joel x F!reader

Explicit, 18+

One: All Alone

Series Masterlist or Main Masterlist - My Ao3

Summary: Your days have become one in the same, even with the terrifying reality of death right outside the walls of Jackson. You never thought you’d be in the situation you’ve been stuck in for seven years now, the daily abuse you endure has become an expectation. You take whatever your husband throws at you, literally and figuratively, because you’ve been trained to believe this is normal. But a new man, Joel, moves next door and happens to be friendly towards you, this causes your husband’s anger to worsen. Your mind starts a gruesome war with itself - can you leave him or do you stay until the inevitable happens?

Chapter Summary: How did you, out of all people, end up in this situation? You knew about it all, yet it still happened to you. How does losing a significant person in your life make you vulnerable and weak? You meet the man who ends up being the reason your soul burns to death.

Word count: 3.4k

⚠️Warnings: Mentions of verbal and physical abuse from stepfather, mentions of women/children in shelters and domestic violence situations, self-hatred, angst, violence against raiders, blood, slit throat, young death, overkill by stabbing, vomiting, dark fic

—

Shameful. Detached. Callous. Numb.

These are the emotions that are now embedded into your skin, so much so that you can’t remotely begin to remember who you were as a human before your marriage to Nate, seven years ago. Ever since you found Jackson and got married the same year, you were known only as Mrs. Rossi, Nate Rossi’s wife, his beautiful little house wife who always made sure dinner was on the table and did everything for him, and in all honesty, you were fine with it for the first year. You were the happiest you could have been living in the apocalypse - Nate got you anything you wanted and made you feel safe.

He would go out on patrol for supplies with Tommy and he would bring you back the things you absolutely needed, from the best foods to the best board games. This was so different for you - you had always been independent and never let yourself rely on a man, or anyone for that matter. So you got comfortable and truly believed you were secure since you were being taken care of for the first time ever - big mistake, because just after the second year of being married, the true side of Nate started to come out.

—

When the outbreak started about twenty years ago, you were in your mid-twenties, lived in a small town in Tennessee and worked with women who wanted to leave their domestic situations. You spent a lot of time, more than you wanted, at women’s shelters trying to help these women who were at their lowest and completely suffering. You didn’t directly work for the police department, but you were technically working under the “Welfare Department”, and if the situations were bad, the cops would call you, or your one other partner, for help.

You had a love-hate relationship with your job. You absolutely loved it when you were able to save a woman, or her children, from the violence and yet, you despised it when you weren’t able to save them - which happened a lot more than you liked to admit. You knew how hard it was for a lot of women to leave their abusers, even if they were treated like the dirt they walked on, the men were able to sink their talons into these women for as long as they wanted. But you had a really hard time understanding how the women who had kids stayed with the man when he abused the kids also.

Your own mother experienced abuse so badly it almost killed her, and she had gone back and forth with him for four years, but she would not give up on him. It got so ugly that, one time, you found her bloody and a bruised mess, curled on the kitchen tile, unconscious. She would be dead if you hadn’t been there. Your step-father, Roy, had beaten her with a wooden baseball bat because he thought she was cheating on him with his best friend. Yet, she stayed with him for two years after that. You witnessed a lot of fighting between your mom and Roy between the age of fifteen and nineteen, to the point where you were stepping in to deflect his anger and violence from your broken mom, to you.

And this is why you had a hard time understanding why women stayed when the kids got involved. Your moms last straw was when Roy laid hands on you for the first and only time - she kicked him out that same night. He had cornered you while shouting in your face about how you and your mom were whores and didn’t appreciate anything he did. You pushed him away from you, and he backhanded you so hard that his knuckles left a mark on your cheek. You screamed bloody murder and your mom came in holding a knife with her eyes about to burst out of her head.

“Get. The. Fuck. Out.” is all she said, as her body was violently shaking but her face was blank.

He left that day and never came back, and your mom and you were thrilled that he was gone, the both of you finally feeling like you could relax. Soon, however, reality kicked in - the reality that your mom was reliant on Roy because he worked and paid the bills, so you and her inevitably ended up battling poverty, so badly that she almost lost the house she owned for eleven years.

In spite of this, your mom found her way, and she ended up getting promotion after promotion at her job. It took her five years after he was gone for her to feel genuinely comfortable again, with money and with herself. She was the reason why you decided to work with battered women and children, as you never wanted people to go through something like your mom and you had. You also knew that it was possible for women to get back on their feet, that it wasn’t easy, but it was possible.

But here you are, years later, in a worse marriage than your mother had, way worse than most of the women you’ve helped along the years, and your own self twenty years ago would be so disappointed in how you, out of all people, got stuck with an abusive husband.

——

Before marrying Nate and before living in Jackson, you were a badass. Surviving by yourself for thirteen years just by constantly moving, you never stayed in one location for longer than four days. In the beginning, you had overheard FEDRA talking about a camp in Boston, and ended up reaching it in the fall time. After about a month there, you found out about the fireflies and you knew Tommy through one or two incidents before he left everything and traveled out West, creating his own camp. You decided you wanted to leave Boston, realizing that the camp just wasn’t what you had imagined, so you snuck out six months later and headed West.

Doing it alone was the most efficient way to survive - you didn't have to worry about anyone else, only you. You quickly mastered shooting a bow and arrow along with guns - the bow was your talent though. You could shoot clickers from yards away and none of the others would be set off, and you were a quick thinker because If something didn’t go as planned, you instantly thought of a backup plan.

Evading FEDRA was another thing you were especially good at, all because you had a radio that had all the stations they used on their walkies. You knew their every play. Even if it didn’t pertain to you directly, you knew about it. Groups and raiders were something that you took care of from a distance, mainly due to the fact that a lot of these groups were men, and even though you could fight a man off, there was no way you could stop all of them by yourself - it was simply unrealistic. You would stumble upon a group of raiders inspecting a building for anything, and you would stay a couple of blocks away, following them for a few days just to study them. The way they talked to each other, what they talked about, who was the leader, who was the weakest link, how comfortable and trained they were with their weapons, and what was their watch rotation at night.

Depending on how smart and big the group was, you would either shoot them with your bow from afar as they were occupied with something and causing chaos, or you would sneak into their base at night, tiptoeing around and silently stabbing them one by one. You would then proceed to steal whatever you could carry with you. Killing was never something you looked forward to, but you looked at it like this; it was either killed or be killed in this new world. If they found you, they’d do worse than just killing, and you’d be damned if you allowed that to happen. So maybe sometimes you got pleasure from making sure these animals never got to hurt anyone again, and that didn’t make you evil, just a little malicious - which you didn’t mind being.

You didn’t mind being alone all the time either, except for when some nights got lonely. After the first three years, you started to hate being alone. You missed having someone to at least talk to - all you had was yourself. You kind of started to go stir crazy from talking to yourself, from reminiscing about your past life always, making you upset more often than you’d like to admit. But you always got up and did whatever you had to for the day, and you came to terms with the prospect of traveling and dying alone.

However, during the winter, after a couple days traveling through Nebraska and being by yourself for eight years, you stumble upon this girl, alone, stealthily trying to cross an open road. You’ve been hiding behind a tree up on the hill right by it, camping there for two days just to see if anyone would come by. But this girl looks no older than seventeen, and she reminds you a lot of yourself, looking like she knows what she’s doing and having things she needs. You’re still hiding, but peek your head to the side to see her, and she turns right towards you, making you snap your head back. “Shit,” you mutter to yourself.

“I saw you,” the girl yells towards you, in a raspy tone of voice, “I know you’re alone. As long as you don’t try to kill me, I won’t try to kill you.” You’re unsure of what to do or what to say, but your instincts tell you to show yourself, so you step out from the tree with your hands up like a truce.

“I’m cool with that,” you yell back, actually getting a chance to look at her.

She’s about five foot three, has the fit yet curvy body type, and looks healthy. Her hair is a dark red color in a messy bun but you can tell it’s long, and although she has a healed scar across her right cheek from what looks like a knife, her face still has this soft look to it. Her backpack and the gear on her back looks worn, like she’s had it for years, her ripped jeans and long sleeve shirt fitting her like they’re all she has along with her black combat boots. You also take note of the weapons that are visible, that she’s holding a bow in one hand with arrows on her back, a rifle strapped along her back, a pistol in her holder on her hip, and a large hunting knife on a thigh holster. This girl is smarter than she puts on, you think as you examine her.

“My name is Rosa, what’s yours?” She asks you, and the two of you are now only about ten feet away from each other, just talking, no weapons drawn. You tell her yours and ask how long she’s been alone.

“Forever. My mother died by FEDRA agents when I turned ten, but she had taught me everything I needed to know to survive,” she explains as her eyes scan your body, then repeats the question back to you.

“Forever. I was in the Boston camp just about eight years ago, but hated what they did. So I left and I’ve been heading West, a guy I know had left before me to head there also, I heard fireflies talk about a new settlement somewhere over there.”

She nods her head and asks, “So, like… Could I come along with you?” Her face shows that she is clearly tired and needs to rest, but you’re hesitant. This could be a big ass ploy, but there’s something screaming that she’s being sincere. You also have this weird gut feeling that you need to take care of her, and it’s the same feeling as seeing the kids in domestic situations back before the apocalypse. You are almost too eager to reply to her, “Yes, you can! I just have some ground rules that I follow, and as long as you can keep up with that, we’re all good, hun.”

She then comes up to you and hugs you, and your body freezes, not having had human contact in years. Yet, she somehow feels like home. Your arms naturally wrap around her shoulders and you two stay like that for a little while, and having the comfort of another living person who you trust is a feeling you can’t even explain.

Rosa and you grow to have a mother-daughter kind of relationship over the next five years, which actually makes a lot of sense in some way, since you were in your early thirties and she was about eighteen when you met. You two built a connection so strong, incredibly fast, like it was meant for you both to stumble upon each other that one day. But one night after you two go to bed in an isolated cabin Rosa found, the worst happens.

“NO-“ Echoes in the room you two share, shocking you awake in a panic, realizing that it’s Rosa’s voice. As you turn to look in the other bed, you see a dark shadow-figure slicing her throat with a large blade, and in a blind rage, you grab the knife under your pillow and lunge towards the attacker, who must’ve not realized you were even in the room. He has no time to react as you start to stab his body over and over and over, not stopping, not caring if he has others with him - he killed Rosa and you have to get revenge. By now, the attacker’s body is on the hardwood floor next to Rosa’s bed and you’re still on top of him, stabbing him repeatedly while screaming and sobbing.

“Why her?! Why not me?!” You scream at the top of your lungs as you stab him for the final time, leaving the knife in his chest and you stand up to look at the mess. You stare at her bloody, lifeless body, the long slice along her neck, full of blood that soaks the mattress under her and her body below, her golden brown eyes wide open along with her pale mouth, and her gorgeous red hair now soaked with blood. The sudden urge to throw up climbs your throat, so you cover your mouth with your right hand and sprint behind you to exit the bedroom, and as soon as you reach the other side of the door, you vomit onto the floor.

After a minute, you swipe your face with your bloody hand and walk out the front door, trying to process what just fucking happened. You open the front door and the sun and cold air hits you in the face immediately, the most gorgeous morning it’s been in weeks making you even more angry because Rosa should be here and be able to enjoy this weather - the way the white snow lays perfectly on the ground and trees, the sun causing the icicles to glisten as they hang, and the wind blowing just enough to make it a bit cooler. You’re standing outside, looking into the sky as tears sting your face, and a piece of your heart breaks in your chest. Rosa was like your child and she told you that you reminded her a lot of her mom. You just lost your girl.

You shake your body, clear your throat, and whisper, “Okay.” A minute later, you walk back inside, grab all of your belongings and some of Rosa’s things you either need or simply want to keep, then you stand over her body one more time as you kiss her forehead and close her eyes.

You leave the cabin, not looking back again, and after a day of walking, you come across a sign that reads, MOTEL 6. The building looks dirty and rundown, but you can’t really complain anymore. You end up clearing the whole building with no issue, which has about twelve rooms, and a total four clickers scattered throughout.

You find the room that is the least destroyed, room 616, and you whisper to yourself as you open the door and walk into the bedroom. After closing the door, you put your back to it and slide down, and as your ass hits the cheap dirty carpet, the true emotion is allowed to leave your body. The anger, grief, and pain is finally able to leak out of your skin with tears that come out of you like a waterfall. You end up in the bathroom and you stare at your reflection, at the amount of blood staining your hands, chest, and face - all horrific. The fact that you know that most of it is from Rosa's killer makes you feel disgusted. The reflection you see of yourself, makes you want to die, just to be with Rosa.

You make yourself shower, since this motel magically seems to still have running water - warm water at that. You scrub and scrub the blood that has stained your skin over the course of a day, just needing to feel clean again. After turning your skin almost raw, you change into the one other pair of clothes you have, and check your perimeter one last time before you go to lay down in your room and sleep for the night.

The sound of a shotgun cocking wakes you up, your eyes open and you see two men standing over your bed with guns pointing right at you. “Who the fuck are you?” The man closest to you demands, he’s blonde with a buzz cut and a patchy beard to match, but he has a face that looks like he doesn’t play around.

“I’m just moving around, was gonna leave when I got up,” you instantly respond, basically defenseless, then turning your attention to the other man at the foot of your bed. He looks kind of familiar but you can’t put your finger on where from. It’s right on the tip of your tongue too.

“You by yourself?” The familiar man asks with a southern twang to his question, and it then clicks in your brain, Tommy.

“Yes, my dau- my friend just died yesterday,” you remark, and they lower their guns to the floor.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tommy says with a different tone than before, and the other man stays quiet.

“Thank you,” you start, still very confused, “Um…who are you guys?”

The man next to you scoffs and replies, “You really don’t know?” You shrug your shoulders with honest curiosity, because last you checked on your map, you were still in Nebraska.

“Sugar,” Tommy laughs, “You are in Wyoming and you have stumbled upon Jackson.” You can’t believe it, you’re in disbelief and filled with sadness. Rosa just had to survive one more day and she would’ve made it with you.

“No way,” You laugh out of disbelief, the two men having a confused look on their faces.

“Yes ma’am. I’m Nate and he’s Tommy, he and his wife are a big founder of the camp,” Nate replies as he sits on the bed next to you, and that’s how you get introduced into the safe life of Jackson and how you meet your ultimate demise, Nate Rossi

[moonjunio]

This was so random, the 1980s ElfQuest board game popped up on Facebook marketplace - in New Zealand with local delivery by hand 🚚😲

I’m a gamer, but I hadn’t had my eye on this fairly rare collectible, since games with great IP are often not all that fun. But you know what? I tried it and had a great time with my teens! No whining, I’m amazed 😂

Full review below…

The even cooler thing is that it’s actually two games in one. The “introductory” version is an abstract tile exploration and clue gathering mission, themed on the Original Quest reuniting the elf tribes with their Palace (actually spaceship, shhh). Play takes an hour, tops.

This strongly reminded me of my favorite board game when I was a kid - Enchanted Forest - because the overall idea is to find the tiles with hidden clues on them, and be the first to guess which one has been set aside at the beginning.

The additional element in ElfQuest is that you have to explore to find the clues, then also find the location of the tile that matches the winning clue. You can’t guess without traveling to the secret location first, and a wrong guess means you lose! There’s definitely strategy in addition to minor memorizing. I think this fits the quest story well.

Each player represents a different tribe, and starts in their home location at one corner (The Holt, Sorrow’s End, Blue Mountain, and the Frozen Mountains). There’s a minor amount of combat in the introductory game, when pawns occupy the same spot.

This is a potential tense moment here, with all three of us gathered next to two clue tiles (the wooden clue tokens are my own replacement parts). But you can easily spend the whole game avoiding confrontation and still win.

Combat just means the attacker must roll an 8 or better on 2D6. The loser is pushed away two spaces. This can be important at the end, because once a player has seen all the clues, others might race towards whatever tile they appear to be targeting as the winning spot.

I was super lucky that the Palace (elf home) was right next to the last clue, because my 15 year old was hot on my heels and willing to risk a 50/50 guess. Go Backs for the win!!

I’m excited to play the full game, for several reasons:

1. You have the option of winning cooperatively or competitively, and this can change during the course of the game. This fits the ElfQuest story much better than pure competition. Games with optional alliances aren't super common.

2. Character cards! Of course the point of having a great IP is to use the wonderful characters and art. The full game has a lot of bonus cards, characters can change groups or be captured, and tribal abilities are asymmetrical (that is to say, your choice of tribe actually matters to gameplay).

3. Way more strategy! One player is the enemy Guttlekraw, who controls the trolls and races to finish a dome around the palace so the elves can't win.

Reviews said this game is complicated, but it really doesn’t look that complicated to me. If you’re not much of a gamer, then sure, but the rules were not very long and easy enough to understand.

Here’s all the components in the box. Only three cardboard counters were missing in mine, easily replaced with spare parts (more on that next time). It even still has the Mayfair Games feedback postcard and the pop out cardboard trash for all the sending star tokens 😜✨🚮

The funniest part is the fold out paper grid... seems unnecessary, but ok.

Essentially what the introductory game teaches you is how exploration works, which is actually mildly educational for younger kids. Each terrain has a different number printed on it, and you only get 14 movement points per turn. So there's a little bit of addition involved. I'd say kids from age 7ish could play independently, depending on whether they're prone to blurt out secret information and intentions :-)

That's all for this time! My kids actually want to play the full game soon, so hopefully it won't be too long until I review the rest. Shade and sweet water until then.

[stelladess]

Ok I have been super busy with school work and been watching Delicious in Dungeon when not doing that so not my best researched post but... Vina Victoria and Arts Fighters!

Initially I said that Vina Victoria is a bit of a departure from the design philosophy of Arts Fighters, I deleted that post because I think it requires more justification to say that though because she does follow aspects of their design.

But before getting into arts fighter design and how Vina Victoria is or is not following it, to recap her kit (talent 2 and numbers not yet revealed so of course we do not know exactly how she will be in play, but preliminary take is that she is very strong).

Her first talent gives her and allies in 8 surrounding tiles physical damage reduction and Vina gets +atk for every ally in those tiles.

Her S1 is an AoE true damage power strike type skill, but more importantly its a flip like her vanguard S2. Her S2 is a permanent duration skill that will charge faster if there are 2 or more allies in her surrounding 8 tiles, once it is charged her range increases (seems to be 2 tiles like Blaze or Nearlter), her attack increases and she can hit multiple times(?). The wording on that translation seems odd but footage seems to suggest it means she can hit more then one enemy per hit. S3 is has her summon lions in every empty tile in the 8 surrounding tiles that can block enemies, she can now attack enemies blocked by allies in those tiles, she can attack multiple targets per attack, her atk goes up and her attack interval goes down (faster attacks), oh and she does true damage for good measure. The game also does not tell you this but her lions seem to apply fear to enemies they block, unclear exactly how it works but depending on how it works it might make them basically immortal, unclear how much block and health they got, or how much damage they do but they do attack enemies that are blocked by them at least. I expect her summons to be extremely strong though when looking at another recent alter´s summons.

So to not have to go over every arts fighter kit individually, they all got a focus on survivability, be it via debuffing enemy attacking, buffing defense, gaining arts dodge, not dying for 10 seconds or applying a shield they all in some way make themself not die.

And of course they all do arts damage. In theory they are meant to duel elites, kind of like a dreadnought or a crusher. But well.... mostly arts fighters is one of those subclasses most people do not bother using. Except for Surtr of course. This is not to say the other arts fighters are bad, anyone doing 4 star only can probably tell you Mousse is quite good and rabbitknights or no 6 star guardknights will have a ton of use for Guardmiya.

Just there are a lot of other options for what arts fighters bring to the table, and they do only rarely perform particularly better then a dreadnought or crusher. And non of these are very popular archetypes because this type of duelist operator is just not as desired most of the time, more of a niche situation after the early chapters, where you are likely to not have a leveled arts fighter. Their main advantage to a dreadnought is higher defensive stats and doing arts damage. The latter of which is less useful later in the game and the former still being behind a defender for non arts damage, and against enemy casters doing arts damage is a downside since they tend to have high resistance.

So Vina Victoria solves some of their issues, getting physical damage reduction makes her better suited for tanking physical damage too. And her easy access to true damage makes her better equipped to deal with high res enemies. Her S3 also generally makes it harder for enemies to even reach her while still letting her fight them. Which is quite good for a duelist, a big reason why Hoederer and Ulpian are both so good is their ability to stun enemies to help them survive longer.

Those parts of her kit I like, I also really like how she benefits from having allies near her. Actively incentivizing you to use more operators to back her up to cover her weaknesses and it is very evocative of the power of friendship and whatnot. And of course her S3 lets her gain the full benefit of it without having to care about placement of other operators. I also like how they incorporated her iconic flip in one of her new skills. Oh and I love that all 3 of her skills seem good, her S2 seems least interesting to me and I suspect will only get much use in AFK setups, and even then I suspect her S1 will be preferred in those.

But... her skills all make her go from dueling a single enemy to doing damage to multiple enemies. She has dropped the aspect of being a "duelist" and is now just killing things. There is no honor in this slaughter. Admittedly other arts fighters have had skills that make them able to fight multiple enemies, so you could argue that this is not a hard rule of the subclass. But all of them tend to have at least one skill good for it. While all of Vina´s skills let her fight multiple enemies at once.

This is probably done because duelists are not very popular. If you need to stall an enemy a defender is likely preferable, if you need to kill something, why not just use any of her big red button operators like Mlynar, Eyja, Logos, W-alter, Degenbrecher, Surtr.... And if you just need to kill one thing you want someone like Ray (who fun fact has higher DPS and better damage against single high defense enemies then W-alter, which I think people should know because I kept seeing people say Ray should be skipped because W-alter is also a sniper).

So they make her better at doing other stuff then just dueling elites, which makes sense. And like, her true damage still makes her an ideal choice for dealing with elite enemies (her S3 seems designed to deal with a wave of troublesome enemies or a few major threats). Her sick flip is also gonna be incredibly useful against annoying small fry with dodge like a certain enemy in the current CC.

All in all her kit looks unique, powerful and does still evoke the usual arts fighter focus on survival and dealing with elites while taking it in new directions, arguably abandoning the concept of "dueling" entirely.

Never been a Siege fan but depending on the chapter 15 operators I might go for her because her kit seems fun. I also expect her to be extremely powerful.

[kiragecko]

I've thought of a video game plot that I think could be cool!

You start in the usually vaguely-medieval setting. There are a lot of NPC's, and they are very clear about your objectives - you need to get to the end castle and defeat the enemy. Prove your worth. Straightforward. If you follow their instructions, it's a reasonably short game of increasingly difficult enemies until you fight the end boss, and take your place on the wall of heroes. All the heroes look similar to you, though if you look closely, they start much smaller and grow. Their expressions also get more subdued.

You start again at the beginning. Game difficulty has ramped up. A few of the paths have become obstructed. NPCs are a bit more demanding. The world has less complex visuals. It's technically possible to play through 4 times to get the bad ending. But the 4th is punishingly hard, everyone is vicious, and the whole world is grey. All the mobs are ridiculously strong, and you are weaker. When you restart for your fifth round, your character keeps pausing, keeps sitting down, and eventually the game fades out. The end screen tells you to keep going.

There are other weird things, right from the beginning.

You have a screen for objectives, and it updates when you talk to NPCs, but doesn't quite match what the NPCs are saying. If you ignored NPC dialogue, you'd think the game was about rescuing someone at the castle and saving the world. The win screen suggests you did this, and doesn't even mention proving yourself, but there isn't any other indication of a prisoner at the castle, or the kingdom in danger.

Also, the NPCs are REALLY discouraging of side quests and exploration. Their dialogue gets more and more hostile if you leave the main path, or build up stuff in your inventory. And the main path has a lot of fighting, but the rest of the world is mostly environmental puzzles.

There are blobby ghost things if you do explore. Some of them run from you, or hide behind barriers. Others give you side quests to collect sets of items, or visit random locations. A few drop their own inventory and apologize for having the items before running away.

It's pretty easy to get sets of items, or get notified that you found X location. Finding which ghost wants what is a bit harder, though. There are a LOT of ghosts. And not all the ghosts will let you approach them, at the beginning.

If you complete a side quest, the ghost transforms into a version of you. You merge. It starts providing commentary, on the side of screen. And the world transforms, slightly.

Usually it's just a cosmetic change. More trees, the buildings get more stained glass and pretty tiles, etc. But sometimes you get new movement options, or types of items. Every few completed quests, the ghosts get more detailed, until the map is populated with versions of you, doing various things. They no longer run. They're playing with their collections of stuff, sitting in scenic locations, building ridiculous contraptions. Some wave when you walk past, or follow you for a short distance, bombarding you with dialogue.

The parts of you that you've absorbed provide worldbuilding, tell you how cool various things you pass are, give you advice for completing quests. They tell you to ignore what the NPCs say. Most of the NPCs act the same, but some get worse and some get nicer. They still redirect you to the main quest. Some parts of your character think the main quest is pointless, others think it is important, but most of them don't want you to do it. Some of them act guilty about this.

Eventually, smaller castles open up. You can beat them, and the game will restart without amping up the difficulty or resetting anything. You can also ignore them, and just collect all 64 types of tree seeds. You've already done that, but you get really happy commentary every time!

There's never a way to 'beat' the main castle without making things worse. But if you sneak in with the right items, you're able to transform some of the wall of heroes. They merge with you like the ghosts, and each time you get a 'death' screen, telling you that the hero was lost and the world is going to fall into ruin. (It doesn't.)

The final state isn't an end. You can endlessly collect items. You can defeat castles. You can get alternate tilesets from some ghosts, so you play in scifi, Classical Greek, etc. settings. But every time you quit, the screen fills with words from parts of you - thanking you, saying goodbye, and telling you things are good.

-

Anyways, enjoy your lives, guys. Don't destroy yourself trying to fulfill society's expectations. Be your weird neurodivergent self. Executive dysfunction is real, you aren't being lazy, and both the world AND you are probably asking to much of yourself.

[bikwin5]

Elly's Adventure 1.3: The Holiday Update

->itch download page!!!<-

Elly's Adventure has a new version! It's only been almost half a year since the last one. This might be the last update ever. This update has some bugfixes and a brand new cheat engine, letting you type in cheat codes to do fun things. One such fun thing is the all new Merry Mode, which gives a holiday-themed spin on things. Try it now, or wait three months to celebrate Christmas in July with hhgregg.

Elly also has a website now! There is not much there that isn't already on the itch page but it might be worth looking at for a few seconds.

Below are more details on the update and how to activate cheats:

A couple of months ago, a dear friend of mine streamed my game start to finish and he very much enjoyed it. Despite that, he found a number of bugs I hadn't seen while making some inane suggestions. At the mercy of his whim, I had no choice but to contract an illness and then start working on the game again weeks later.

If you download the new version, there doesn't seem to be much different at a glance. In addition to bugfixes there is now a brand new CHEAT ENGINE! Cheats can be activated on the title menu by typing the letters CHEAT on your keyboard, then typing in the corresponding cheat name, which will show up in the top right of the screen. Cheats can be up to 12 letters or numbers and are not case sensitive.

To start you off, here are some helpful cheats:

MERRY- Activates the all-new Merry Mode! This mode is purely graphics and sound replacements, and is the reason why the game is now a few megabytes larger. If you are interested in replaying the game I recommend this for a freshly jolly experience.

NATALIE2COOL- Unlocks extra mode without having to beat the game.

NOBABY- Removes twizzler baby from the game.

GODMODE- Makes the player invincible, and falling down pits no longer takes away a life.

SELECTMAP- Lets you jump to a stage from the main menu. This will overwrite your current save file.

The last two cheats in particular will prevent you from seeing the special 1CC screen, so if you are interested in doing that perfect run then avoid them at all costs. Check the readme for slightly more detailed information on cheats.

Additional changes:

Fixed a problem with stage 19 where bouncy enemies could leave a certain room

Fixed a few misplaced tile graphics

Fixed problem with switching palettes on the pause menu using a gamepad stick or d-pad

Fixed an issue with the options screen where left or right input was usable on an option when there is nothing to select

Fixed incorrect palette when adding new sprites. If you have existing save data from a previous version, your palette will probably be reset to default upon loading.

Fixed incorrect sprites when using the rocket powerup

Added ability to go back to the main menu and change palettes when paused on a bonus stage

Added Nintendo DS support

Sandwich now rotates

[kandidandi]

God I have been thinking so much about your ysf au and the comment of Moon attempting to get rid of his claws more or less unleashed the brainworms on HOW Moon would get rid of them (First time I had to jot down notes for an idea). Dis ask is gonna be slightly long since I've got 4-ish different scenarios, which are dependent on the structure of Moon's body and the tools available wherever he locked himself in.

1st scenario

Assuming that his jaw can move and his teeth are metal (or something with similar properties), he'll bite the tips of his fingers off, like how humans can. Now that he has bitten off his claws, realization would set in that his teeth are also dangerous. 2 possible ways to neturalizing the danger; 1. He rips his teeth n jaw out (getting rid of the danger) or 2. Locking his jaw shut (no opening, no danger). 2nd way has lesser consequences, since nothing would be exposed. 1st way would eventually lead to total dismantlement, ripping out the jaw would just expose more hazards and removing those new hazards would just start the Domino effect.

2nd scenario

Assuming that the claws are retractable, easier to just rip them off (thats it honestly, not much destruction here)

3rd scenario

Jaw won't open and claws are built into endoskeleton. Moon would either break them off (difficult due to claws having a tiny surface area) orr slowly file them down. Hopefully he has access to a metal file so the process of filing dem claws don't take as long. If not, well, it's a longgg and agonizingly slow process of filing his claws slowly on the concrete floors/ceramic tiled floors to the point that his fingertips are blunt.

4th scenario

Basically he finds a hole small enough to fit part of his claw into and just snaps it off using leverage.

1st scenario is a quick route to straight up dismantling himself (biting fingers off just leaves for more dangers present, with the wires and such).

3rd scenario is my favourite, just cause of the potential agony both AIs would face (and also the amount time I spent thinking about this single scene).

Moon's need to rid the danger is so so very urgent, but process of filing can't be sped up, so much so when you don't even have the right equipment. Even better if there are 'pain receptors' in the fingers (am I evil? Kinda). Moon having to bear such slow pain while also having the time to constantly recall the scene with the actions that disfigured y/n and thinking of all afternaths that can happen, as he's filling them off. The constant repeating noise of scratching against the floor wouldn't drive Moon insane, but for Sun it definitely would.

With Moon ignoring Sun in every capacity, Sun is left hearing this noise. He could turn off his audio receptors sure, but the noiseless void would be much much worse. So he bears listening to this noise, fully knowing what's making it and the reason for its existence

In short, Moon drowns in regret n guilt; Sun is alone with the noise being his only company, along with his thoughts. Both of them going too deep for either of them to help each other in time.

----------------------------------------------

Rambling over wheew. Did I spend too much time thinking about this? Yes. Will I regret some of my takes later? Definitely

Spent about an hour or 2 writing this idea out, which went out of hand honestly speaking. Sorry if the wall of text is disorientating, my brain doesn't enjoy words to be wording right in general. Anyway it's about 4am for me sooo, Guten Nacht!! o7

-beep boop.

OH MAAN PAINGE THIS IS SO GOOD SFDHFDS yes i like the third option the most but man the other ones are insane aswell thanks for this massive ask btw woah /gen /pos

[govindhtech]

How To Use Llama 3.1 405B FP16 LLM On Google Kubernetes

How to set up and use large open models for multi-host generation AI over GKE

Access to open models is more important than ever for developers as generative AI grows rapidly due to developments in LLMs (Large Language Models). Open models are pre-trained foundational LLMs that are accessible to the general population. Data scientists, machine learning engineers, and application developers already have easy access to open models through platforms like Hugging Face, Kaggle, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.

How to use Llama 3.1 405B

Google is announcing today the ability to install and run open models like Llama 3.1 405B FP16 LLM over GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine), as some of these models demand robust infrastructure and deployment capabilities. With 405 billion parameters, Llama 3.1, published by Meta, shows notable gains in general knowledge, reasoning skills, and coding ability. To store and compute 405 billion parameters at FP (floating point) 16 precision, the model needs more than 750GB of GPU RAM for inference. The difficulty of deploying and serving such big models is lessened by the GKE method discussed in this article.

Customer Experience

You may locate the Llama 3.1 LLM as a Google Cloud customer by selecting the Llama 3.1 model tile in Vertex AI Model Garden.

Once the deploy button has been clicked, you can choose the Llama 3.1 405B FP16 model and select GKE.Image credit to Google Cloud

The automatically generated Kubernetes yaml and comprehensive deployment and serving instructions for Llama 3.1 405B FP16 are available on this page.

Deployment and servicing multiple hosts

Llama 3.1 405B FP16 LLM has significant deployment and service problems and demands over 750 GB of GPU memory. The total memory needs are influenced by a number of parameters, including the memory used by model weights, longer sequence length support, and KV (Key-Value) cache storage. Eight H100 Nvidia GPUs with 80 GB of HBM (High-Bandwidth Memory) apiece make up the A3 virtual machines, which are currently the most potent GPU option available on the Google Cloud platform. The only practical way to provide LLMs such as the FP16 Llama 3.1 405B model is to install and serve them across several hosts. To deploy over GKE, Google employs LeaderWorkerSet with Ray and vLLM.

LeaderWorkerSet

A deployment API called LeaderWorkerSet (LWS) was created especially to meet the workload demands of multi-host inference. It makes it easier to shard and run the model across numerous devices on numerous nodes. Built as a Kubernetes deployment API, LWS is compatible with both GPUs and TPUs and is independent of accelerators and the cloud. As shown here, LWS uses the upstream StatefulSet API as its core building piece.

A collection of pods is controlled as a single unit under the LWS architecture. Every pod in this group is given a distinct index between 0 and n-1, with the pod with number 0 being identified as the group leader. Every pod that is part of the group is created simultaneously and has the same lifecycle. At the group level, LWS makes rollout and rolling upgrades easier. For rolling updates, scaling, and mapping to a certain topology for placement, each group is treated as a single unit.

Each group’s upgrade procedure is carried out as a single, cohesive entity, guaranteeing that every pod in the group receives an update at the same time. While topology-aware placement is optional, it is acceptable for all pods in the same group to co-locate in the same topology. With optional all-or-nothing restart support, the group is also handled as a single entity when addressing failures. When enabled, if one pod in the group fails or if one container within any of the pods is restarted, all of the pods in the group will be recreated.

In the LWS framework, a group including a single leader and a group of workers is referred to as a replica. Two templates are supported by LWS: one for the workers and one for the leader. By offering a scale endpoint for HPA, LWS makes it possible to dynamically scale the number of replicas.

Deploying multiple hosts using vLLM and LWS

vLLM is a well-known open source model server that uses pipeline and tensor parallelism to provide multi-node multi-GPU inference. Using Megatron-LM’s tensor parallel technique, vLLM facilitates distributed tensor parallelism. With Ray for multi-node inferencing, vLLM controls the distributed runtime for pipeline parallelism.

By dividing the model horizontally across several GPUs, tensor parallelism makes the tensor parallel size equal to the number of GPUs at each node. It is crucial to remember that this method requires quick network connectivity between the GPUs.

However, pipeline parallelism does not require continuous connection between GPUs and divides the model vertically per layer. This usually equates to the quantity of nodes used for multi-host serving.

In order to support the complete Llama 3.1 405B FP16 paradigm, several parallelism techniques must be combined. To meet the model’s 750 GB memory requirement, two A3 nodes with eight H100 GPUs each will have a combined memory capacity of 1280 GB. Along with supporting lengthy context lengths, this setup will supply the buffer memory required for the key-value (KV) cache. The pipeline parallel size is set to two for this LWS deployment, while the tensor parallel size is set to eight.

In brief

We discussed in this blog how LWS provides you with the necessary features for multi-host serving. This method maximizes price-to-performance ratios and can also be used with smaller models, such as the Llama 3.1 405B FP8, on more affordable devices. Check out its Github to learn more and make direct contributions to LWS, which is open-sourced and has a vibrant community.

You can visit Vertex AI Model Garden to deploy and serve open models via managed Vertex AI backends or GKE DIY (Do It Yourself) clusters, as the Google Cloud Platform assists clients in embracing a gen AI workload. Multi-host deployment and serving is one example of how it aims to provide a flawless customer experience.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[thegeekcloud]

⚠️ BSD MANGA SPOILERS ⚠️

This is some theories I've gathered from tiktok and some i made myself and whether I agree with them or not.

Number 1: everything was part of sigma viewing fyodor's plan - although comforting i don't think thia theory is fairly stable. First of all, there are a lot of things happening in a lot of different places that are shown among the same pages and can't be part of fyodor's plan (particularly anya and bram). Furthermore, Sigma's ability is to exchange information and what he asked was fyodor's secrets. Though this could apply to his plan, the amount of secrets fyodor holds was so large that it overwhelmed sigma (as shown) and even if we got fragments of them in those pages they wouldn't be our characters but rather some more groundbreaking to sigma information . Now, is Sigma alive? Usually fyodor kills with a particular style, meaning that there is ALWAYS some form of blood splatter.

As you can see, there is none. Fyodor could had killed sigma but didn't. He seems to be just overwhelmed the way atsushi was.

Which brings me to

Number 2: Fyodor has a double personality ability. - although I doubt that is his whole ability, i believe it is a side effect from it. Fyodor's true ability remains a mystery to all but sigma. Fyodor told sigma about his other persona and then proceeded to say he lied about it. So the information sigma uncovered by touching him would not surprise him that much if that was all to it. However, the fact that I believe fyodor left sigma alive, also suggests that there is a part of fyodor who made the decision to show mercy. Ergo, the second, scared persona we saw in the last issue.

And now.

For the elephant in the room

Number 3: Dazai is still alive. - i honest to God want to believe that. As a writer myself I understand the decision of killing a character such as dazai. He is in the role of the "mentor", someone who accompanied the mc since the beginning and became a role model/father figure to them and ultimately dies to urge the hero forward. There is sense in killing the mentor. However, this does not seem an opportune moment for it. Other reasons for killing dazai would be to push tragedy into the story, chuuya waking up after the world is saved and realising that he was the one to kill dazai, or simply demonstrating the unfairness of life (basically how game of thrones shocked). Both these options seem reasonable for this case anf Asagiri might have chosen to walk down one of these paths. However, since atsushi is also incapacitated, if asagiri chose the former he would place the entire burden of saving the world to anya. Though jt would make a statement to have a little girl do what all these anility users can't, it would lowkey render the rest of the story meaningless as anya is not as explored as a character as others are. Not in the least. As for the second one.....i'm worried about that one cause asagiri is a f*cling masochist sometimes.

Now, how could dazai still be alive?

First clue that we all agree upon:

Though people have stayed conscious after being shot in the head, we are talking about a

Close up forehead shot

The gun was touching his fucking SKIN

There is absolutely NO WAY for dazai to have survived that shot and take another and also have life to chat.

No

So

That shot didn't fire a bullet. Even if a gun doesn't fire a bullet it can still ignite the powder and burn the skin, especially if it's touching it like in here. Someone on tiktok noticed this:

Could it be a design of the jacket? Sure. But it could also be the bullet that never got fired. In the end there are three fracture point on the wall tiles:

The first one happens when dazai is shot on his right shoulder

We see a characteristic blood splatter. Thing is, only two out of three holes have that trail.

Since he was definetely shot in his left shoulder as well we have to assume that hole is from there. So what is the third one at the bottom?

Did chuuya stop the bullet at the gun's barrel, brought it behind him and shot it at the lower wall along with his third gunshot ?

Guess we'll see. All i want is for my baby to stay alive. We should always keep in mind that both dazai and fyodor as also poisoned. My guess is that vampirism will be released in the next episode for at least one of the characters, so that is what anya's contribution.

He can definitely stretch it but he already pulled that chard with fukuchi escaping twice. It's gonna get boring and annoying at some point.

Question for then:

Will akutagawa return as a corpse afyer he is released? Or will he be healed?

[schwender-exe]

Devlog #2

Hello all again and welcome to devlog #2!

First up, we have tiles! While not the final look of them (to be honest I drafted them up to try them out, but I kinda dig the simplistic look?) they'll be what's making up the terrain in the game! After playing around with it for some time, I found it a hell of a lot easier to map out levels/rooms with these tiles than the old system I had in place.

Originally, what made up the terrain was Polygon2Ds with collision added on top of them and while it was easy to use, it made the terrain a bit to one-toned for my liking and made plotting out levels a bit of a nightmare because I could do any shape or angle or whatever with it, which sounds nice but... well a bit too much freedom can kill my creativity which is why the limitations of the tiles feels like the right balance.

Moving on to what's next: the curse I wrought upon myself. To be more specific? The story vs gameplay and my failure to plan ahead.

I'm not one to plan things out much, I tend to just go with the flow and address problems as they come into view, but that's been biting me in the ass for a bit now. You see, I sent out a test build about a month ago to some dev friends and I got some feedback which has stuck with me. "You need something in between when you arrive at Chloe's abode and when you meet Chloe." (Chloe being the mushroom-headed character). The reason it stuck with me is because I realized, while I had a story, I didn't really have much in terms of gameplay to smoothly fill in the beats in between. The problem with trying to shove gameplay into a story which didn't account for that, well... You can imagine it didn't go well. So here's my new plan. I'm scrapping the story I have so far and will be re-writing it with new gameplay in mind that'll hopefully flow together well. What kind of gameplay? well that's a tough call. I've been juggling ideas around in my head for weeks and none seem to stick, so far I've managed to get a swimming/floating kind of movement in game which seems fun, but I'll have to tinker around with it more before I can say it 'fits' anywhere. If anything, it was at least a fun exercise in the new state-based character controller I've made this time around for the player.

Well what about combat? That's always an easy one, well... I've shied away from that for some time as I thought combat would move the game in a direction of becoming like most other platformers out there where slapping in combat is a simple solve-it-all glue you can put anywhere. If I'm going to add in combat, I want it to be interesting, unique and of course, fun. I'll be experimenting with more movement options, possibility of combat, the use of items, etc. and will be sure to update next blog post with what I achieve.

Moving on from that, I've also been experimenting with dialogue! I've added on to my dialogue code and have added dialogue portraits which, I'm not sure how I feel about as of yet, honestly. I don't think I have enough to base my opinion on whether I'll keep it or not as I like having the dynamic poses of the overworld sprites. I might have it as a toggleable feature in future as to give players the option to view the overworld sprites or the visual novel-esq sprites.

I hope this devlog was an interesting read, I know I didn't seemingly make much in terms of progress, but with the circumstances I'm in it's been a bit of a bottleneck in productivity. I hope next devlog I'll be in a better spot to provide more to show.

[the-xp-budget]

Goblins - Part 3 (War Chanter)

In the centre of this clearing, you see a single table made out of marble. It’s overgrown with vines, but it’s definitely a table. Especially, since there’s a goblin sitting behind it, drinking and eating from a meal of ham and cheese and wine. You see them notice you and set down the book they are reading.

“Good evening,”

What do you want to do?

Goblin War Chanter

“Bubbling of boiling rain, Shimmering of a setting sun, Flickering of a new-born flame Listen to the devils run.” As you descend towards the amphitheatre’s stage, you finally start see this individual in detail. You notice a fancy looking waistcoat embroidered with snakes and the odd harp, over a fairly simple tunic and breeches. Although it is their face that you focus on. Over one of their eyes, this Goblin wears a diamond shaped patch, apparently made entirely of mosaic tiles. “Watch the candle as it dies Feel the chill of night’s embrace Pierce beyond the daylight’s lies, To see the wolf who lies in wait.”

The Goblin War Chanter exists in conversation with the previous entry on this blog. They are both spellcasters, but where the Pyro is a glass cannon, the War Chanter plays support. This is most exemplified by their spell selection, but their raw statistics also back this up.

The expected Armour Class and Hit Points for a level 1 creature are 15 and 20, respectively, and the War Chanter only slightly better than the Pyro. They have an AC of 17, which is pretty high, but they only have 16 Hit Points, so they can’t take too many strikes. For contrast, the Pyro had the same AC, but 1 fewer Hit Points. In the grand scheme of things, 1 extra hit point is not much, but it might save the War Chanter’s life in a pinch.

The difference comes in their abilities. Most significantly, the War Chanter has two actually viable martial options, their Shortbow, and their Dogslicer.

The Shortbow is the easiest to understand. It deals a d6 damage, with a +8 to hit, and the Deadly property.

I have gone over the general strategy for that in my first post, although I hadn’t yet developed my damage chart system, so that hasn’t been compared yet.

The plan here is to open the turn hiding to gain a bonus to the Goblin’s first attack, before loosing a second arrow with their second action, before returning to a hidden position to set up their next turn.

Hide Then Attack Twice (Standard Cover) 0.6 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.3 * 11.5) + 0.4 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.2 * 11.5) + 0.4 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 11.5 = 6.72 Hide Then Attack (Greater Cover) 0.7 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.3 * 11.5) + 0.3 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.2 * 11.5) + 0.4 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 11.5 = 6.83

Since this takes three actions to complete, we account for that in the chart. Assuming that the generic line will have taken all three actions to attack with the expected +7 to hit (plus Multi Attack penalty) for a total of 1d6 +2 damage, we get this:

You may note that the average for the generic strike is below its minimum damage, and there is a reason for that. The minimum assumes all that strikes hit, the average doesn’t.

You hear a faint whistling, and whirl around to see an arrow fly through the air towards you with a twenty-six against your Armour Class. You look for its source, and see the Goblin with his bow raised, loosing another arrow towards you before ducking out of view. I assume a ten misses you.

In any case, the Shortbow is pretty good considering the damage output is lower and the strategy uses one less action to actively attack, but it still doesn’t meet the benchmark. We will come back to this in a bit though, because the War Chanter has a few tricks up their sleeve.

However, sticking to the basics, the War Chanter also has a Dogslicer, which has the Agile and Backstabber properties, as well as dealing a bit more base damage than the Shortbow. Once again, I am repeating a strategy from before of move and then strike twice. Although, this time with the added variable of whether or not the target is being flanked applied to both this and the generic strike.

Attack Twice (Not Flanking): 0.5 * 5.5 + 0.2 * 11 + 0.45 * 5.5 + 0.05 * 11 = 7.96 Attack Twice (Flanking): 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.3 * 13 + 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.1 * 13 = 11.7

The Goblin steps back from you for a moment, leveling a short, straight sword at your head and allowing you to see the holes that have been drilled into its blade. Then they lunge, stabbing once at your neck, followed up immediately by a strike towards your abdomen. That’s a twenty-three and a twelve to hit?

So, we have one main option, get into a flanking position and start slashing. We have one more means of dealing damage on its way, but I want to briefly highlight a theme that will come up again with the War Chanter, and that is best exhibited in the Generic line on this graph.

Often, the biggest cause of a damage increase is a bonus to the attack roll, rather than to the damage roll. The generic attack above only changed this one variable, and the average damage increased by more than two points. It’s not much, but it adds up pretty quickly.

In any case, that final damaging ability is the War Caster’s only damaging spell, Telekinetic Projectile. This spell uses two actions and an attack roll, so it can interact with that hide action. It deals 2d6 damage, so the same as two Shortbow strikes, but crucially, it does so with only one attack roll, so the multi attack penalty has no effect.

You hear a whispered word from somewhere you can’t see. “Volare.” Then, you notice a piece of rouble lift into the air and begin spinning in place. You see it gain momentum, moving faster and faster, until it suddenly flies through the air towards you like a stone released from a sling. Does a sixteen beat your Armour Class?

With the War Caster’s +7 to hit with spells, the formula for casting this spell and then hiding is as follows:

Hide Then Cast Telekinetic Projectile (Standard Cover): 0.6 * (0.5 * 6 + 0.25 * 12) + 0.4 * (0.5 * 6 + 0.15 * 12) = 5.52 Hide Then Cast Telekinetic Projectile (Greater Cover): 0.7 * (0.5 * 6 + 0.25 * 12) + 0.3 * (0.5 * 6 + 0.15 * 12) = 5.64

So, not that, then. The War Chanter seems precision designed to be in melee, which is weird for a spellcaster.

Come to think of it, a lot of this creature’s kit is weird. The War Chanter’s defining ability is Goblin Song, which allows them to make a performance check against two creatures, applying a penalty to Perception and Will saves on a success.

The question I have, is why? The only one of the War Chanter’s abilities or spells that even interacts with Will is this one, so it only serves to perpetuate itself. Other than that, it counteracts perception, which isn’t used in combat except in two places. Stealth, and initiative.

Let’s circle back for a moment and look at this creature’s skills, because this is the only Goblin for whom Stealth doesn’t have the highest modifier. Instead, this Goblin specialises in Deception.

Suddenly, things are starting to click. I’ve talked about Goblins relying on ambush tactics in past posts, but here we flip the switch a bit. The War Chanter serves as bait that can keep the targets’ attention and make hiding easier for their comrades.

One of my favourite uses for this is as a signal. The War Chanter rocks up before the fight and offers to guide the characters to a location where, unbeknownst to the party, the Chanter’s friends lie in wait.

Maybe the War Chanter wants information, so they play things casually, asking leading questions and just waiting for the players to get comfortable. When they have got everything, and the trap is about to be triggered, they start singing, targeting the two characters whom it has seen notice things with Goblin Song to make sure that the ambush goes off without a hitch.

You watch the Goblin find a bench and lie down on it, placing their hat over their face and singing a jaunty little hymn to themself. You catch the names of a few of the deities they have mentioned up until this point in there and find yourself entranced by the music. You feel secure in the Goblins calmness.

When combat does break out, I think it would be the War Chanter who offers the chance of surrender to the targets, mostly because they are the most charismatic of the Goblins, but also because they are a mage. They know more than most others that a fight doesn’t have to end with one side dead.

Speaking of being a mage, this Goblin does have a slightly larger repertoire than just Telekinetic Projectile, so let’s talk about those.

“Wait.” The Goblin stops, extending one hand in front of themself and pointing at the hall ahead. It looks normal to you, but obviously your guide has noticed something. “Artis Manus.” They flex their hand, and you watch, emerging like a ghost, a second translucent hand made from what appears to be different mosaic tiles that begins to float ahead of you. You watch the hand move onwards, until it stops above a specific part of the floor, and presses down gently. Immediately, it is shattered by a bolt from a hidden crossbow, dissipating immediately. The Goblin looks back at you, their grin widening.

Telekinetic Hand is a role-playing spell. It picks things up and puts things down, but as you can see above, I would allow it to also trigger traps. In this case, our War Chanter friend is trying to earn the loyalty of the player characters, so that betraying them later will be easier. So, they’re protecting the party from a trap. It would probably have been seen it anyway, but now it seems like the Chanter is helping.

Message is similar, but with a different use. It conveys information, something the Chanter can use to take note of the targets’ abilities. Either for the sake of counteracting them later, or realising that this party is way out of the Goblins’ league, and that the ambush is a bad idea.

Perhaps to make best use of this, the War Chanter leads the party through the lair of another beast and fights alongside them to diffeat it. If they decimate the beast, the Goblin will take a hint and call off everything, but if the group makes it through in bad shape, now the War Chanter knows about their skillsets, strategies, and maybe even weaknesses, all of which it can relay to its comrades later on.

Your guide staggers to their feet, they don’t look too badly hurt, but they are limping slightly. “I’m impressed. You’re very good with that sword, my friend, I never would have expected… well… I didn’t expect it to light on fire at all.” They give you a wide, earnest smile, and you could almost swear that their eyepatch begins to glow a little. It must be the light though. The second you look to closely at it, it’s just a normal eyepatch, if a quirky looking one.

The key to this strategy is that the War Chanter doesn’t ever reveal their full hand. They have a pretty high deception score, but even that won’t save them if they spill the beans too early. They don’t even have to hide the fact they are a spellcaster, just the number of slots they have at their disposal, and especially what happens when they start singing.

It also allows for the War Chanter to grow attached to the party and maybe decide to go against their original crew.

Anyway, the next spell on our list is Figment, which allows the Goblin a bonus to making a diversion, offering an escape. With the War Chanter’s base +7 in Deception, and the expected +7 to perception for a level 1 creature, this has a 65% chance of success.

Naturally, there are two uses to this, one noticeably more viable than the other.

Since a creature is off-guard if distracted by this, the War Chanter could use their final action to make a strike against them. See if you can see the flaw with this idea.

Figment Then Strike 0.65 * (0.5 * 6.5 + 0.3 * 13) + 0.35 * (0.5 * 5.5 + 0.2 * 11) = 6.38

This strategy is not worth it, but what if we used the third action to hide instead. The cover would have to be within 10 ft. of the War Chanter, so this is a niche option, but its still a decent option for escaping the fight.

You watch the War Chanter wipe the trickle of blood from their mouth, as that patch of theirs begins to glow. Before you can react, they make a wild gesture like throwing something upwards, and you hear a growling from behind you. You look around, and watch the corpse of one of those already slain begin to rise to its feet and glare at you with lifeless eyes. As you glance back, however, the War Chanter has disappeared.

Which brings me to Bless and Courageous Anthem, two spells that do mostly the same thing, although it is the difference that key here. Bless offers a +1 to all attack rolls made by allies within a certain radius, while Courageous Anthem offers that and a damage boost to a larger radius at the cost of an action each turn. Bless has the benefit of not needing to be sustained, which frees up that action for something else.

The equation here assumes that the first ally is a Goblin Commando who is flanking the target (+8 to hit, 1d8 +3 damage), and any more are Goblin Warriors at range (+7 to hit, 1d6 damage), outside the radius of the Bless spell.

I feel the need to break this down step by step, so here goes:

Three Attacks – War Chanter (Bless In Effect): 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.35 * 13 + 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.2 * 13 + 0.4 * 6.5 + 0.05 * 13 = 16.9

This is the War Chanter just standing there and whaling on their opponent. They gain the bonus to attack rolls from bless and

Three Attacks – Commando (Bless In Effect): 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.35 * 15 + 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.1 * 15 + 0.25 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 16.88

This is the same for the Commando, with the caveat that his damage per strike is higher, and his Horsechopper doesn’t have the Agile property.

Hide Then Attack Twice – Warrior (Unaffected By Bless): 0.55 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.25 * 12.5) + 0.45 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.15 * 12.5) + 0.35 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 0.05 = 6.16

This part of the equation assumes that the Warrior is using the “hide then attack twice” strategy with standard cover, because I don’t want my brain to explode.

This is easier to understand visually.

Each of these represents the total damage of that many Goblins added on just the War Chanter. Once again, however, this doesn’t mean anything without a baseline.

The grey here stands in for the same strategy, just without the Bless spell. Obviously, Bless doesn’t have nearly as much of an impact as it should. It helps, but let’s try another situation.

What if we scrapped the Warriors and just made all the extra Goblins Commandos (“c”)? Forget flanking for the moment. In that case, the graph and equation both look like this:

Three Attacks - War Chanter (Bless In Effect, Not Flanking): 0.5 * 5.5 + 0.25 * 11 + 0.5 * 5.5 + 0.05 * 11 + 0.3 * 5.5 + 0.05 * 11 = 11 Three Attacks - Commando (Bless In Effect, Not Flanking 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.25 * 15 + 0.45 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 + 0.15 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 13.5

Noticeably, Bless starts to add on some serious damage when everyone is within its reach. Remember that this is over one round, so if there are five Commandos, this is doing 8.5 extra points of damage per round.

The Goblin raises both of their fists to touch their chin with their thumbs before pushing forwards with open hands. At the same time, their eyepatch begin to shimmer as the tiles that make it up shift around, now forming a different symbol. As you watch, their allies seem to stand up a bit straighter, as if filled with a sudden burst energy.

But that per round thing is important, because it means the War Chanter is sacrificing two of their actions to get this effect up, which begs the question: is it worth it?

For this, I need to contrast two scenarios. In the first, the War Chanter casts Bless, then spends the next few of their turns in melee. In the second, it spends that first turn attacking instead.

For the sake of realism, in each of these scenarios, the Goblins will get two attacks per turn, and spend the third action moving into position. They will also try flank when they can.

Commando Damage Per Turn (Bless) 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.35 * 15 + 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.1 * 15 = 14.25 War Chanter Damage Per Turn (Bless) 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.35 * 13 + 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.13 * 13 = 12.74 Commando Damage Per Turn (No Bless) 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.3 * 15 + 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 12.75 War Chanter Damage Per Turn (No Bless) 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.3 * 13 + 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.15 * 13 = 12.35

We’re catching up, but it’s still not worth it. Well, not with only one Commando. What if we added in another? This one can’t flank with anyone, but it will remain within the Bless radius.

Commando No. 2 Damage Per Turn (Bless) 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.25 * 15 + 0.45 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 11.63 Commando No. 2 Damage Per Turn (No Bless) 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.2 * 15 + 0.4 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 10.5

Here, Casting Bless catches up after about four turns, which is pretty decent. Naturally, this will increase with the number of Commandos in the radius, and if it is set up before the fight, this entire thing is irrelevant.

But what about the War Chanter’s other buffing option?

At first glance, Courageous Anthem is just Bless but better. It offers the same bonus to attack rolls, but it also grants that to damage rolls and saves against fear. It’s radius is also greater, so what’s the catch? Why is this spell a cantrip but Bless is a 1st rank spell?

The key here is baked into the game system itself, because Courageous Anthem only lasts for one round, so not only is it designed to be cast more often, but it also takes up an action each round to have any affect.

Let’s run that scenario with the Commando’s again. Each Commando will move and take two attacks, ignoring flanking for the moment. Meanwhile the Warrior will move and then make one attack of their own.

One Strike - War Chanter (Courageous Anthem) 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.25 * 13 = 4.95 Two Strikes – Commando (Courageous Anthem) 0.5 * 8.5 + 0.25 * 17 + 0.45 * 8.5 + 0.05 * 17 = 13.18

So, no. This tactic doesn’t work. The extra damage doesn’t make up for the missing action. This spell is designed for everyone to spend their full turn hacking and stabbing, but because of Goblins in general having lower than average hit points, they can’t afford to do this. They have to move, even if its just defensive, to limit the amount of attacks aimed at them.

The Goblin spits at you, their eyepatch shifting around once more to accompany a shout. “Ad victoriam!” Their voice echoes, louder and louder, until it seems like the wind itself is joining in the cry. It almost inspires you as well. Almost.

But we aren’t out of options yet. Let’s bring back the Warriors for a moment, and assume they are all at range, and the War Chanter is for the moment, the only one in melee.

The Chanter’s equation hasn’t changed, but the Warrior now look like this:

Hide Then Attack Twice – Warrior (Courageous Anthem) 0.55 * (0.5 * 4.5 + 0.3 * 14.5) + 0.45 * (0.5 * 4.5 + 0.2 * 14.5) + 0.4 * 4.5 + 0.05 * 14.5 = 8.47

Suddenly, we start making up for lost ground, and you might be able to see where I am going with this.

I mentioned earlier that Bless takes a few turns to catch up and become worth it. But there is a pretty glaring problem with this:

Fights in Pathfinder go quickly, and Goblins in general don’t have that many hit points. Bless takes a few rounds to be worth it, but our War Chanter friend might not have the time for that.

This is where Soothe comes in. It’s a spell that restores a ton of hit points and offers a bonus to saves against mental effects. It’s a also ranged spell, so it can be used for anyone within a certain radius.

You watch the War Chanter’s grin widen. “Aesculapii benedictionem” Their eye patch begins to glow once more, and you watch light pour from their wounds, which fade before your eyes. Then, you see Goblin straighten up and ready their sword as if this fight has just begun.

The maths for the efficacy of healing vs just running away makes my head hurt, so let’s just simplify and say that this spell adds an average of 9.5 hit points to the War Chanter’s team. If the opposing team does less damage than that per turn, this will give the Goblins at least one more round to balance out the Bless, if not, it isn’t worth it. That’s the math I’m going with here.

Here's a summary:

The War Chanter uses Message to coordinate an ambush and tries to set up the combat with Goblin Song. When combat starts, they will spend their first turn setting up Bless and maybe Courageous Anthem, before offering the chance to surrender.

If the fight continues, the War Chanter has two options, depending on how many allies are within the radius of their Bless Spell. If the majority of allies are outside, they it will cast Courageous Anthem and make a single strike.

If the majority are inside the radius, the Chanter will just slash twice with their Dogslicer and hope for the best.

The first time on of the Chanter’s allies in melee is brought down below half of their hit point maximum, they will try to remedy that with a casting of Soothe.

Finally, if the fight is going bad, either the Chanter is brought below a third of their hit point maximum and they have no more healing spells, or if they have only one ally left in melee, they will cast Figment and try to use it as a distraction to help them flee.

Alternate Spells:

I prefer the War Chanter to the Pyro, purely because of how their abilities and proficiencies are laid out. The Pyro is a generic spellcaster, which allows for customisation. But the War Chanter can have their entire repertoire swapped out and they will still feel pretty much the same.

However, here are a few changes that could be made in order to shake things up entirely.

Bane is the obvious option, switching the War Chanter from support to control by reducing enemy likelihood of hitting with attacks. It’s a pretty decent defensive option that can be used in conjunction with Courageous Anthem to really mess with the battlefield.

Similarly, Concordant Choir gives the War Chanter a nuclear option that might be useful for opening the fight with while their companions lie in wait.

Speaking of which, Goblin Song reduces Will Saves, so giving the War Chanter some options that trigger those is always a fun idea. I like the Ancient Roman philosopher/actor aesthetic that I have going, so Cycle Of Retribution works with that as a defensive option, but so does Command, which can set up some interesting scenarios.

I also like Daze, which can really mess up someone’s first turn leading in to that surrender option. Of course, it would mean the War Chanter would have to spend their next turn setting up their Bless aura, but the first round is for threats.

Summary

I do like the identity of this Goblin. Even without the abilities, the proficiency in Deception means it plays a completely different role in the adventure. Maybe it stands on the other side of a pit trap beckoning the players over, or maybe it engages with the players, asking for information and offering some in return.

This is a charisma-based monster, so missing out on the opportunity for roleplay is, in my opinion, missing the point of the monster.

In any case, if you have any suggestions for creatures you’d like me to cover, send me a message or put your suggestion in the replies or the ask box. I’d be happy to oblige.

All credit for this idea comes from the The Monsters Know What They’re Doing blog, I have simply ported the idea over to PF2e.

[givehimthemedicine]

more thoughts on Hawkins Lab / memory alteration / NINA / the rainbow rooms / Kali / Henry / El / Terry

(of possible interest to laozuspo and aemiron-main bc of that other HNL post / possible implications for Henry. no pressure tho you guys are both way ahead of me on this investigation)

Owens implies that he developed the NINA program only since El's power loss in case she ever needed it restored, but I have very strong doubts.

how does Owens know that NINA could bring El's powers back stronger than before unless this technique has already been used? best-case-scenario, tested on someone during recent development to make sure it works for El, but worst-case and more probable scenario, used to psychologically manipulate or bring out powers in the lab kids, maybe even El herself, in the past. maybe even Terry Ives (Becky specifically mentioned Terry doing sensory deprivation tank experiments, which is a component of NINA).

HNL has need to alter potentially all the kids' memories, not just Henry

the lab wants all those kids uniform and tractable, so they'll make good little lab rats / spies / assassins, right?

the lab-born kids like El would be relatively easy to mold, because the lab is all they know. but what about Kali, Henry, and any other kids who were wild-caught old enough to remember their former lives? you'd think even remembering the fact that there IS a world outside the lab would make them harder to control. don't they need to be wiped of their memories of their past lives and stripped of individuality, identity?

you would probably also want to wipe any kid after sending them on psionic spying / assassination missions so they don't retain classified info or gain too much knowledge of the outside world, lest they become an escape risk.

I think there's a strong possibility that NINA or equivalent was already used throughout the HNL program for this purpose.

I don't know how you straight up delete memories, but it's easy to see how NINA could be used to plant fabricated replacement memories. add a dash of brainwashing and presto.

Kali tells a little of her life after the lab, but I don't remember her saying anything about before it. all our knowledge about her kidnapping comes from that newspaper clipping, right? do you think she remembers her former life?

Henry is the only other kid we know is wild-caught, and he still has his pre-lab memories, but maybe that doesn't matter in his case because he's uniquely kept in line with soteria.

Two - Eighteen have to be free to use their powers for experimentation, so the lab can't soteria them, they have to be controlled a different way. the most secure way to keep someone imprisoned isn't with strong locks, it's for them not to fully realize they are imprisoned or that escape is even an option. I doubt any of the kids like the lab, but they probably have a limited awareness that there is any other place.

Henry's pre-lab memories could also have been made safe for him to keep (tampered with). we know Virginia was in cahoots with Brenner before Henry even went to the lab, and I wouldn't put it past her to cooperate with the creation of staged footage of Henry's home life to NINA him with. possibly even Alice, unwittingly. not Victor.

now let's talk about the rainbow room(s)

Kali and El both refer to a "rainbow room" in season 2, but the room we see in Terry's memories bears basically no resemblance to the season 4 one.

the areas Terry is seen searching look reasonably like a 70's hospital, and the rainbow room looks like be a small exam-room type area. but season 4's rainbow room is big, with tiled halls, heavy metal doors, high security, the whole works.

these definitely can't be the same room, but I've always wondered whether we're supposed to just fudge it and consider them to be the same?

did the lab retool and get a high-security makeover after the Terry incident, or did both places exist the whole time?

I haven't scoured every frame of the show so tell me if I'm off, but I think I'm deciding that no, the two rainbow rooms aren't supposed to be the same, and that HNL has always had both a publicly presentable hospital area (where the s2 rainbow room is), and a more intense locked-down lab/prison area (where the s4 rainbow room is). they serve the same purpose, just with different security levels.

the lab isn't the mid-70's hospital area made-over because for one thing, they still have a hospital area when Will is a patient there in 1984. this doesn't look like Terry's exact hallway, but note those wood-veneer doors and square plated handles.

HNL has always been both a "hospital" and a prison.

from the path we see Hopper take in 1x5, it would appear that the tiled hallway familiar to us from s1, El's room, etc, is on the ground floor, just beyond a keycard security access point. we see him get in the elevator and go down to the water tank / mothergate floor. he later describes this to Joyce as "upstairs vs downstairs".

but the lab is at least a handful of stories tall. so I feel like the hospital area must be on the second floor or up.

we aren't shown the path that Terry Ives takes to locate her rainbow room, but we do see her come walking from the direction of what looks like elevators just before she finds it, opposite bright windows, which I'm taking to mean that the Terry rainbow room was on an upper floor. not on the same floor as the s4 rainbow room.

tangent: is the hospital where Sara died supposed to also be Hawkins Lab? I thought that was in New York? this looks like a different landing in the same stairwell. I'm confused about the Hopper lore because I think some of it comes from the novels I haven't read and idk whether we accept that as canon. please advise?

anyway, idea: were the lab kids not numbered, not officially program subjects, from birth?

little Kali and El have long hair and seem allowed to wear fairly normal clothes during their free time. the tattoos go on left wrists and I don't think I see one on baby El, not that we're given a very good look.

the lab kids seem to be roughly a year apart each, but they don't go all the way down to babies. the youngest (Eighteen)'s actor was probably 7 or 8 at the time of filming. so there is such a thing as a minimum age for the program.

It can't be that they didn't start numbering the kids until after the Terry memory, because we saw Henry get tattooed in '59 or '60, very possibly before Two was even born.

I'm now chewing on a scenario where maybe young prospective lab kids were kept in a lesser-security area to be evaluated, and officially made test subjects only once they demonstrated powers.

after all, Brenner took newborn El because he expected Terry's abilities to be passed down, but you can't ask a baby to do telekinesis for you. it'll be a while before you get proof. and the lab can't be handing out number tattoos too hastily and wasting resources on some kids for years only to find they show no promise.

we know that didn't happen because there are no numbers 001-018 unaccounted for. no failed discarded subjects.

if not all people have equal latent potential, you can't pick all winners from the getgo, and if you also don't discard any failed numbers, that means you'd have to evaluate a bunch of kids, keep the best for the program, and discard the others before they ever become numbers. and if you do that (without just killing them), you probably wanna wipe their memories first so they don't go around telling what you're up to. this avenue of thought may be of interest to Will-as-a-lab-kid truthers (doesn't this require Will to be missing from home for a chunk of his childhood? explain to me please).

a program intake system like this could help explain how all the kids can be numbered neatly in order of age despite the ages of wild-caught kids being impossible to anticipate, which has bothered me for a long time. edit: I may have misjudged Kali's age, although if any other kids were wild caught I guess the question still bears asking

I hc this memory to have occurred during that preliminary observation time, unless they just didn't start shaving heads until the mid 70's. electric shock seems overboard for standard kid misbehavior. Kali must have already demonstrated psychic potential in order to be kidnapped in the first place, so I imagine this was probably disciplinary action for refusing to use her powers for them.

now let's look at El's and Kali's memories:

what event is this describing? if Kali escaped before El, how was Kali the one who found El gone?

could this be when El disappeared from rainbow room 1 and taken to rainbow room 2? did Kali ever see rainbow room 2?

or was El just in sick bay or isolation or something, and Kali thought she was gone-gone?

Henry corroborates Kali's escape being prior to El's. this puts Kali's escape after - what, say 73? 74? but before 79.

El apparently has no memory of Kali except for the one she got from Terry. did El lose her Kali memories (along with pre-massacre memories in general) from the coma, or did the lab wipe/brainwash her after Kali's escape, not wanting her to remember her at all?

because it's funny that even during the scene where Henry is jogging El's memory about Terry's visit, that same Kali rainbow room footage all we see. I know the scene was about her remembering Terry, not Kali, but it makes me wonder if she remembered that scene by way of her 1986 knowledge, or if that's also all 1979 El remembered about Kali?

El is struggling with the cognitive dissonance here - she insists that Mama died making her, even though she also does successfully recall the memory Henry is describing, and it upsets her. again, I imagine NINA is a lot better at restoring or implanting memories than at deleting them, so you'd have to rely heavily on old fashioned brainwashing to try to cover up an event like this. until Henry brought it up in 1979, El probably believed she had imagined it.

WHY does Kali pause like that before calling the Terry/rainbow room footage a "memory"? it makes me feel like she questions its veracity. either Kali was given different information about how kids enter the program, or she knows that isn't really how El's situation went down. or something. I'm suspicious of ALL lab related memories, even from the good guys.

flies in my ointment:

if Kali finding El gone is describing a time when El was taken out of my theoretical observation area and locked fully into the program, before Kali, you'd think she would have a lower number

if Kali escaped the observation area before she ever made it into the program proper, how was she already known as Eight? unless they were all numbered unofficially before that and just not tattooed yet, and if you gotta discard a kid you recycle their number

if you don't earn your number/tattoo/spot in the program until you're at least something years old, I wonder if El wasn't called Eleven as a toddler? Kali asks her name, she says Jane, and then Kali checks her wrist for the tattoo. I can't actually recall any proof that Kali remembers El as Eleven.

spinning my propeller hat and honking my clown nose:

HNL has high security and Terry already shot a guy on her way in. she had to have already had some idea of where to look in order to find El before the guards got to her. somebody told her where. hint: Henry somehow

did Henry lie and tell Kali that El was gone to prompt Kali's escape?

did Henry think he was telling the truth when he told Kali that El was gone, but really Brenner fed him that?

Kali seems less empathetic than El, do you think Henry would've had a similar alliance with her? why would he choose her to help escape. or did she not need help escaping?

why don't these people just ask each other the most obvious questions in the world AAAAAAHHH